Tikhonov, Nikolay Aleksandrovich

▪ 1998

      Soviet politician (b. May 14, 1905, Kharkov, Ukraine, Russian Empire—d. June 1, 1997, Moscow, Russia), served as premier of the Soviet Union from 1980 to 1985 and was aided in his career by his long-standing friendship and political association with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Tikhonov, who was raised in a middle-class Ukrainian family, became an assistant train driver in 1924. After graduating (1930) as a metallurgical engineer from Dnipropetrovsk (Ukraine) Metallurgical Institute, he began working in heavy industry, rising from engineer to plant manager. Tikhonov met Brezhnev in the 1930s and joined the Communist Party in 1940. Though he was only 35 at the time, it was an advanced age for someone hoping to achieve high political rank. Between 1947 and 1950 he was a manager at a pipe factory located in the same area where Brezhnev was serving as regional party secretary. Tikhonov entered government administration in 1950 when he joined the Ministry of Ferrous Metallurgy; he became a deputy minister five years later. In the early 1960s Tikhonov worked for Gosplan, the state planning committee. He became deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers in 1965, and in 1976 he was named first deputy chairman to Aleksey Kosygin. Tikhonov was made a full (voting) member of the Politburo in 1979, and the following year he succeeded Kosygin as premier. He was primarily responsible for the economy but was not particularly effective in that role. He retired in September 1985, just a few months after Mikhail Gorbachev's election, and was replaced by the younger, reform-minded Nikolay Ryzhkov—a changing of the guard that symbolized the ushering in of perestroika, the policy of economic restructuring.

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▪ premier of Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

born May 1 [May 14, New Style], 1905, Kharkov, Ukraine, Russian Empire [now Kharkiv, Ukraine]

died June 1, 1997, Moscow, Russia

      premier of the Soviet Union from 1980 to 1985, a staunch Communist Party (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) member closely associated with the former Soviet president and Communist Party chairman Leonid Brezhnev (Brezhnev, Leonid Ilich).

      Born into a middle-class Ukrainian family, Tikhonov graduated from the Metallurgical Institute in Dnepropetrovsk in 1930 and later went to work for the Nikopol Pipe Factory in Ukraine, working his way up from engineer to plant manager. As a party member he was also successful, serving as first secretary of the local Dnepropetrovsk committee from 1947 to 1950 and later becoming first a deputy minister and then a minister in Moscow in the late 1950s, overseeing economic affairs. In 1963 he became deputy chairman of the State Planning Committee; and in 1965, after Brezhnev became party leader, he was named deputy prime minister. Although he did not become a member of the Politburo until late in 1979, he was chosen to succeed the ailing Aleksey Kosygin (Kosygin, Aleksey Nikolayevich) as premier of the Soviet Union just two months before Kosygin's death in December 1980. Regarded as a loyal and dutiful but not particularly effective premier, the ailing Tikhonov retired from his post as premier in 1985, but he remained a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party until mid-1989, when he was ousted.

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